


doldrums

by mistycodec



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Implied Sexual Content, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-26 11:25:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13234692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistycodec/pseuds/mistycodec
Summary: “I told you. Damn thing’s gone out.”“And that’s the thing, it shouldn’t have,” Ford replies, pacing around the small recessed hole in the floor that houses the engine block, brow furrowed in deep concentration. “The fuel gauges are reporting correctly, it’s got about three-quarters left in the tank, and I’d just tuned it up not a week ago. It should be working.”The pervasive chill of the Arctic has already begun to settle in around them without an engine to keep the ship warm, and Stan sighs deeply, breath condensing into a white puff of air that melts away into the gloom of the lower deck.“Can you get it working again?”





	doldrums

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elligy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elligy/gifts).



> Part of the 2017 Stancest Secret Santa Exchange. I was assigned Elligy, and decided to hurt not only myself but everyone else with the following tragic tale.
> 
> Based upon this art: http://sightkeeper.tumblr.com/post/166202652034/inktober-7

Stan was in the middle of washing a few dirty plates over the kitchenette sink when the overhead light blinked rapidly three times before going out with a soft click. He curses, reaching up to give the bulb a few swift taps, then more insistent thumps, before giving up.

"Ford!" he shouts, in the vague direction of outside, "engine's out again!"

“Are you sure it’s not just the light,” calls a very uninterested voice, muffled through the wooden walls of the cabin.

Stan ponders that. Ford’s question is reasonable; they’ve gone through more than their fair share of incandescent bulbs in the time they’ve been at sea, as the boat’s wiring was too old to handle anything more robust than the small LEDs on Ford’s instrument panels, and Stan had a terrible habit of leaving them on too long until they’d fizzled out unceremoniously.

He decides to dig out another bulb, unscrewing the old one before tossing it in the trash and replacing it with a brand new, if dusty, model. He waits until the bulb clicks into place, and…nothing. No light.

That’s when Stan notices the water has stopped running, he can no longer hear the gentle hum of Ford’s computers below deck, and the whole cabin is swathed in an eerie silence.

_Shit. That can’t be good._

“Nah, light’s still out. Didn’t you just fuel up the damn thing at the last port?”

Ford groans, loud and dramatic enough for Stan to almost regret pulling Ford into this. However, he’s inside the cabin and shedding his coat with hardly a word of protest. “Yes, I’m positive. I just topped it off a few days ago and ran a diagnostic on it with no problems. Are you _sure_ it’s not just the light?”

Stan shoots Ford a withering look. “Yes, _Stanford_ , I’m sure it’s not the light.”

 

              “Well, shit.”

Were it any other scenario, Stan would have laughed at the sheer simplicity of Ford’s curse. Ford hardly allowed himself the pleasure of using casual swears in conversation, and Stan covers his mouth briefly so to not let out an inappropriate laugh.

“I told you. Damn thing’s gone out.”

“And that’s the thing, it _shouldn’t_ have,” Ford replies, pacing around the small recessed hole in the floor that houses the engine block, brow furrowed in deep concentration. “The fuel gauges are reporting correctly, it’s got about three-quarters left in the tank, and I’d just tuned it up not a week ago. It _should_ be working.”

The pervasive chill of the Arctic has already begun to settle in around them without an engine to keep the ship warm, and Stan sighs deeply, breath condensing into a white puff of air that melts away into the gloom of the lower deck.

“Can you get it working again?” Stan asks.

Ford shrugs. “Probably. It’ll take a few hours. I’ll need—”

“Complete and total silence, yeah yeah, I got it No need ta tell me twice. I’ll go fish or somethin’ an’ leave ya alone.”

That earns Stan a soft smile. “Fish for dinner? You shouldn’t have.”

“What were you expecting, a romantic candlelit dinner fer two? Sorry, Sixer, I can’t pull a steak outta my ass in the middle of the ocean.”

Ford lightly punches Stan’s arm and wheezes out a laugh in that quiet, endearing way that makes Stan’s stomach flutter, even after all these years. “I’ll have this thing purring again before you know it,” he says eventually gesturing towards the engine. “In time for that dinner, even.”

“Hey, better you than me,” Stan replies, tapping the exterior with the toe of his boot. “You’re the only one she listens to.”

 

              Hours pass, and the engine remains silent. Ford passes over Stan’s offer of dinner in favor of working on the engine, waving Stan away with a grease-covered hand. “I’m close to getting it back up, I just _know_ it,” he muttered, forgetting Stan was even there and turning back to the mess of gears and wires before him.

The cold is a bit more noticeable now, with Stan’s breath coming out in constant visible huffs. He’s taken to wearing his coat indoors, sneaking small hand warmer packets from Ford’s stash so his hands don’t lock up in the cold. They help, but just barely.

Ford doesn’t come to bed that night, and Stan falls asleep to the sound of intermittent, furious clanking from the engine room.

Sleep is fleeting, but when it comes it’s blissful.

 

              The next morning comes and it’s strangely quiet. Stan finds Ford slumped on the floor, chest slowly rising and falling in deep sleep, a wrench still clutched tightly in his hand. Stan retrieves a blanket from their bed and draped it across Ford’s back before ascending to the upper cabin and digging around in the fridge for something to eat.

He settles, eventually, on a half-frozen leftover sandwich that’s so rock-hard it makes Stan’s teeth ache to chew it.

Stan considers building a fire on deck to cook the fish he’d caught, but he can’t afford to burn down the boat while he’s at it.

He ends up releasing the fish into the sea before joining a now-awake Ford in the engine room once more.

“You need to eat,” he says, offering Ford an opened can of soup. “It’s not hot, but it’s about all we’ve got.

Ford grimaces but takes the can, tilting it up just enough to slurp the icy broth and beans before swallowing down a desperate mouthful. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and tries very hard to keep it down, a wave of nausea passing over his face before thankfully subsiding.

“You know,” Ford says after a long silence, “I’ve had worse in Dimension `8&5.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Ford replies. “Much worse.”

 

             "We should fuck," Stan announces from his stooped position by the engine. He'd been whacking at the thing ineffectually with a rubber mallet for about half an hour, fiddling with various gears, oiling this and that, in an attempt to bring it back to life. The ensuing racket was loud enough to wake the dead, let alone Ford, who'd been trying to sleep off the cold, at least for a little while. Ford had needed the break, Stan urged, from toying with the engine for so long, and though Ford had protested it mightily he’d fallen asleep the moment he’d collapsed onto their bed. Stan didn’t have the heart to make Ford get up and wash the engine grease off his face.

It had been getting harder and harder to sleep for any period of time, what with the pervading chill that seemed to seep into Ford's bones, refusing to let him rest. Eventually, he'd roused himself from their bed and padded over to the engine room to see what the hell Stan thought was doing, though he's not surprised in the slightest as to his brother's unorthodox greeting.

"I'm sorry?"

"You heard me," Stan says, setting down the mallet. "Figured we'd do somethin' to shake off this damn cold.

Ford gives his brother a sharp look. "If you think I'm going to strip down with you in this weather, you're going senile earlier than I'd imagined."

"You'd just have ta pull your pants down a little," Stan counters, suddenly becoming more animated than he has in days. "An' besides, if we're gonna do _somethin’_ we might as well get hot _and_ bothered, yanno?" He punctuates that with several suggestive eyebrow waggles, and were it any other circumstance Ford would have chuckled and quite possibly taken Stan up on his offer.

"The sweat produced would cool us down far more than the act would," Ford replies instead, hardly missing a beat. Stan's grin immediately slumps into an annoyed frown; he gives Ford an overdramatic roll of his eyes and goes back to whacking the gearbox with the rubber mallet.

"I ever tell you how much I hate that you're a nerd?"

Ford barks out a laugh that almost startles his twin; it's harsh against the stark, quiet landscape of the arctic ocean that surrounds them. "Frequently, Stanley."

 

              “Ford. C’mere for a second.”

Ford looks up from the laptop and cracks his knuckles, rubbing the bare flesh together to bring some heat back into the frigid skin before drawing his coat further around his body. It takes him several horrifying minutes to force himself into a standing position despite every bone and muscle loudly protesting the action, and several minutes more before he’s made it to Stan’s side.

“What’s going on?” Ford asks. “Has the ice started breaking up?”

“No, nothin’ like that,” Stan says, and the excitement fades from Ford’s eyes quickly. “Just, stand here for a second, okay?”

Ford throws Stan a glowering look. “Stanley I swear, if you’ve pulled me outside for some practical joke—”

“Just shut up and humor me, would you!” Stan snaps with such ferocity that Ford’s mouth, that was open in retort, immediately snaps shut. “Look, I know it’s fuckin’ cold, but—I need to know if I’m going crazy or not, alright? So just…just stand there for a sec.”

Ford worries at his lower lip for a moment, licking the raw cracked skin with an equally dry tongue before nodding and closing his eyes. He stands as still as he can manage with the bitterly cold temperatures and he strains to hear something, _anything_.

“Whatever you must have heard, Stanley, it’s gone. I can’t hear a thing.”

Stan sucks in a nervous breath before letting it out slowly. “That…that’s just it. No sound, no _wind_ …nothing.”

It takes Ford a minute to comprehend what Stan is getting at, but suddenly everything clicks into place and his eyes widen in horror. “Oh _no_.”

“Yeah, oh no is fuckin’ right. Without that engine or any wind, we’re—”

“Stuck,” Ford finishes for him, with a disturbing sense of clarity.

“Yeah,” Stan breathes. “Ford, I’ve—I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“So have I,” Ford replies. “So have I.”

 

             Stan finds Ford that evening at the prow of the boat, staring off into the icy wasteland of the ocean before them. On any other night, with thousands of stars twinkling above them in crystal clarity and a light chill in the air, Stan might have taken the opportunity to tuck an arm around Ford’s waist, to have his brother point out all the constellations he knows, and then spectacularly ruin the moment by giving Ford a wet and messy kiss.

But the engine is dead and they’ve been locked between sheets of ice for about two days now, with no sign of things loosening up any time soon. And with no heat and no more candles, both brothers are running out of ways to stay warm. The decks have already begun to frost over, and ill portent of what is yet to come.

“Ford?”

Stan’s voice is all at once too loud when everything around them is silent and still and he grimaces, lowering his voice before speaking again. “You know I trust you, right?”

He hears Ford let out a deep sigh before his twin is turning to face him. Ford looks exhausted, eyes rimmed with impossibly dark smudges, and Stan can see his hands are shaking before Ford shoves them away into deep coat pockets. “Yes, of course I do.”

“I know you said we were gonna make it outta here, because let’s be honest, trapped in ice and freezing to death is a pretty fuckin’ bogus way to die.”

Ford can’t help but chuckle weakly at his brother’s antics. “I don’t plan on it no.”

“Good.”

Stan scrubs a gloved hand down his face but doesn’t move from the deck. “Alright, humor me for a second.”

Ford, feeling good-natured, cracks an easy smile in Stan’s direction. “Sure. What’s on your mind?”

“How do you know if we’ll make it?”

The smile immediately fades from Ford’s face as he feels something turn icy and sour in his stomach. He can’t lie to Stanley because he knows his brother will smell bullshit from a mile off. But, if he’s being honest with himself, the truth terrifies him. There is little either of them can do with a broken engine and no wind, and the last of their hopes had died when the ocean froze over and locked them securely within impenetrable sheets of ice. With little food and nothing left to burn, the outlook was grim.

“I don’t know,” Ford says finally. His voice is now shaking as much as his hands. He moves away from the prow of the boat and starts to head back towards the cabin, through it’s not much warmer inside than out. He suddenly can’t stand the look of the sky or the ocean any longer.

“We may still not.”

 

             "We'll be encountering some interference as we move deeper into the arctic circle, so you might not here from us for a while."

The Dipper on Ford’s laptop screen frowns, and even with the video chat settings on the lowest quality to conserve battery, Ford can see his forehead wrinkle into shallow, worried creases. "Even with the mirrors?"

Ford nods. The lie is small, but an easy one. "Dipper, not even magic is foolproof."

The boy sighs deeply, clearly disappointed he'll have to go for a while without hearing from either of his grunkles, but seems to concede. And that, to Ford, is a blessed relief. "Alright, I'll have to tell Mabel to hold off on baking you two anything, since we can't pass it through to your end.”

"That's perfectly alright," Ford says, lips twitching into the first grin he's smiled in days. "I've been telling Stanley to lay off on sweets regardless. He’ll thank me sooner or later."

They talk for a few minutes longer before Dipper logs off and Ford closes the lid to his laptop.

“When are you gonna tell them we’re good as dead?” Ford nearly jumps at the sudden reappearance of Stan’s voice, and his brother steps out from the shadows of the cabin, arms folded. “They’re gonna know sooner or later that somethin’s up when we don’t answer any of their calls.”

“It’s better this way,” Ford says, as if saying it aloud will convince himself further of the fact. “Two old men, disappearing in the Arctic Circle. A bit poignant, don’t you think?”

“More like a horror story,” Stan scoffs. “Is that what we’re gonna be, Stanford? One ‘a those ships people find decades later, the crew frozen ta death inside? Jeez, that’s…”

Stan lets the thought fade into silence, as if he cannot bear to finish it. Ford licks his lips before suddenly standing and crossing the floor in two quick steps before he’s kissing Stan fiercely.

It’s only by necessity of air that the two part minutes later, each gasping for breath they cannot have.

“S-sorry, I—I wanted to do that, before we—”

“Kicked the bucket?” Stan asks, lips twisted in a wry grin.

“Yes,” Ford replies. He pulls Stan into another kiss, and another still, and the two find themselves stumbling down to the lower deck before collapsing in bed, limbs tangled in an inseparable knot of coats and sweaters that Ford does not want to break away from.

 

             Stan awakes gasping from an unspeakable nightmare. His entire back is drenched in sweat, and his screams have inadvertently woken up Ford, who is immediately sitting up in bed and gripping his arm firmly. “What happened?” he asks. “Was it Bill again?”

Stan shakes his head vigorously, and he clings to Ford’s arm like a lifeline. His whole body shakes, whether from the cold or the vestiges of the dream that refuse to fade. “F-Ford, I don’t want to freeze to death, I-I don’t— _fuck—_ I don’t wanna die!”

“We’re not going to die, Stanley.”

“Like _hell_ we’re not!” Stan spat. The anger and vehemence in his voice fades as quickly as it came, but Stan cannot stop shaking. He allows Ford to curl his body around him like a protective blanket, and it helps, though just barely. “Fuck, we—we’re never gonna see the kids again, are we?”

Ford shakes his head, and that’s when Stan shatters, his whole body wracked with tearless sobs. He’s too dehydrated to have a proper cry, and the tears would freeze his eyes shut in a pain Stan doesn’t even want to consider.

“Hey, sh-sh-sh, it’s alright,” Ford whispers, dragging a steady gloved hand through Stan’s hair. The action does little to comfort his twin.

“No, it’s not. This-this isn’t the way I wanted to go, alright? I-I wanted something stupid, yanno, like dyin’ in yer sleep when you’re ninety-two, or, I dunno, goin’ down in a blaze of glory. Not…not this.”

Ford nods, though he doesn’t truly understand Stan’s wishes. He’d never expected to live this long, always expecting he’d die upon terminating Bill in the Nightmare Dimension, watching the miserable plane of existence Bill called home collapsing around him before finally being snuffed out. Every day, minute, and second he’d lived after that was simply borrowed time.

He presses a weak kiss to the crown of Stan’s head, and holds his brother tighter. “I never gave much thought to the way I’d die, though…I can’t say I’m displeased that it’ll be at your side.”

Stan half laughs, half coughs, though the action is sickly and he shudders to draw in breath, and for a brief moment Ford is afraid Stan is going to die in his arms, just like this. Then, Stan gets his breath back, and Ford finds that he does, too. “You ever listen to yourself? God, that was awful, absolutely fuckin’ cheesy as _hell_.”

“Oh, and you’ve never said anything cheesy in your whole life. Doubtful, Stanley.”

“Shit, Sixer, ya got me there,” Stan says. He coughs again before nestling deeper into Ford’s chest until Stan can hear his heartbeat, thumping away in a weak yet constant beat. Though the heat is all but gone from their bodies now, the sound of Ford’s heart is a reassuring one in Stan’s ear, Stan can’t help but be comforted by it.

It had always been them since the beginning, and in the end, in the Arctic Sea where only ice and snow lay, Stan knew it could only be them, there was no other way for things to be.

“Ya really got me there.”


End file.
